The Social Media Jersey – Round 1 – Giro Toscana nominations

Thanks to everyone for sending in their nominations for riders who’ve blogged, tweeted and used social media at and about Giro Toscana – these are the first riders who are in the running for the real cash prizes in the Unofficial Unsanctioned Social Media Jersey competition. This is the post in which we’ll be aggregating the nominations for this race, starting with those that have been submitted thus far. Each nomination includes the name of the rider and a link to the piece of social media for which they were nominated (e.g. blog, tweet, video, etc.). In the case of riders with multiple nominations we’ll include additional links under the one rider name (in order to keep things simple). And of course, there’s still time to nominate in the comments.

Before we dive right in, just a quick update on the fundraising. Thank you again for every contribution and sharing of this idea. We’ve now raised just over $1600 and still have a couple of weeks to go. So please don’t forget to keep up the great work in getting some buzz going about this and to encourage more people to help us create the coolest new award in pro cycling. 🙂

Alright, let’s get into the nominations. Remember to actually click through to make sure you see any photos or other details, this post is just a summary! Here we go (oh and these are in no particular order – or maybe they’re in alphabetical order by rider surname, it’s hard to say for sure):

Out on the course, there’s barely time to think. This course included three straight stretches of road separated by three hairpin corners. We raced in the the dark, and it was difficult to see. Essentially, it was like ‘Go, go, go as fast as you can. Eek. Corner. Go, go, go. Hairpin. Go, go, go. Small bend. Pavé.” and then suddenly it was the finish.

The finish was a bit tricky, too, because 10 meters past the finish, we had to come to a complete stop. It’s crazy to go from full gas to slamming on brakes in the space of 10 meters. Just past the finish line, the moto would pull off. Riders at the end of the prologue were directed into this tiny little shout off area otherwise they would run into the place where the other riders were starting. We’re still feeling the effects of this full gas effort, and suddenly we need to have enough wits about ourselves to stop. Immediately.

And some of her tweets:

Stage 1 done, day for the sprinters, I was happy to stay upright and safe. It had everything we love about italian racing … Chaos!!

The photos were fantastic, but I (Dan) also really enjoy Meredith’s highly evocative writing style. Here’s just one paragraph from her stage 2 report:

With Lauren up the road, we were pretty happy with the race situation. Most other teams were as well. Faren Honda missed the move, so they weren’t as happy. In fact, they were doing quite a bit of work in an attempt to bring them back. The rest of us were sitting behind them, watching them attempt to get organized. Nicole Cooke (Faren Honda) must have died a thousand deaths on the front. She would take these monster pulls, get popped, come back to the front and take another huge pull before getting popped again. She did this over and over and over again.